Alchemy Factory catalysts and cauldrons explained (1.1)

There are four catalysts, and each one after the first is made from the one before. The game describes each with a single effect:

In-game texts call fail outputs “products” too, so the Fertile Catalyst's description doesn't settle whether it doubles only the main product or every output. Community calculators double every output (see the research above), and so do one player's worked catalyst setups (Steam thread, August 2026 (opens in a new tab)). That reading isn't confirmed in-game, so watch the fail-output belt the first time you use one.

Each step up uses the one below: Fertile Catalyst takes 1 Unstable Catalyst, Resonant Catalyst takes 1 Fertile Catalyst and Eternal Catalyst takes 15 Resonant Catalysts. Unstable Catalyst and Fertile Catalyst come before the Advanced Athanor (Level VIII), so you will first use them as ingredients (and the Fertile Catalyst as fertilizer).

Only in the Advanced Athanor. The in-game manual presents catalysts as something you add to it, community research (opens in a new tab) finds the effects only run in that machine, and players report they don't trigger anywhere else: not in a Cauldron, and not when a Fertile Catalyst feeds a nursery (Steam thread, September 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

Nine recipes have a charge cost (all listed below): the Advanced Athanor's own four and five recipes of the plain Athanor, which the Advanced Athanor also runs. Its in-game description says Athanor recipes keep the Athanor's heat use, so they draw 32 P/s instead of the 360 P/s its own recipes draw. To put a catalyst on Coke, build an Advanced Athanor.

In a Cauldron, a catalyst is just an ingredient with a value. The game's own Cauldron recipes use them that way: Sapphire takes 1 Unstable Catalyst, Emerald takes 1 Fertile Catalyst and Ruby takes 1 Resonant Catalyst. Three of the four can also come out of a Cauldron (Unstable Catalyst, Fertile Catalyst and Resonant Catalyst in the finder); the Eternal Catalyst can't.

A catalyst lasts its charges divided by the recipe's charge cost, in crafts. (The in-game manual: fixed charges per catalyst, a cost per use set by the recipe.) Costs run from 1 for Coke to 1,000 for Gold Dust. One Advanced Athanor making Gold Dust at base speed spends 7,500 charges a minute: an Eternal Catalyst lasts 13.3 minutes, a Resonant Catalyst 12 seconds. The last four columns give crafts per catalyst.

Below 1 means one catalyst holds fewer charges than a single craft costs: an Unstable Catalyst has 180, Obsidian costs 420, Lapis Lazuli costs 550 and Gold Dust costs 1,000. The game doesn't say how the machine handles that, so test it in-game before you plan a line around those numbers.

Athanor recipes fail part of the time: the game lists a repeating pattern of which crafts give the product and which give a fail output. An Unstable Catalyst swaps in a second pattern. That usually means more of the product, but not for Copper Powder.

With Unstable Catalyst, Malachite and Obsidian come out on every craft. Copper Powder goes the other way: every craft gives Impure Copper Powder, which only helps when you want it for Bronze Ingot or Malachite.

The in-game manual says several catalysts can work at the same time. One pairing is wasted: a player who tested the combinations reports that Resonant Catalyst overrides Unstable Catalyst (Steam thread, September 2026 (opens in a new tab)). That fits the descriptions: once every output comes out on every craft, there is no pattern left to change.

The Advanced Athanor has three belt inputs and one pipe input for liquids, and no catalyst recipe takes more than two solid ingredients, so one belt input is free for catalysts. For two catalysts, players merge the ingredients onto one belt to free a second input, or mix both catalysts on one belt (same thread).

On a shared belt, mind the ratio. The charge cost belongs to the recipe, so every catalyst in the machine pays the same cost per craft and they run out in proportion to their charges: about 6.25 Fertile Catalysts per Resonant Catalyst, or 1.33 Unstable Catalysts per Fertile Catalyst, whatever the recipe. A player quotes the same ratios (Steam thread, August 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

Lapis Lazuli takes 1 Impure Silver Powder and 1 Shattered Crystal per craft in an Advanced Athanor and costs 550 charges a craft. Some crafts give a Shattered Crystal back as a fail output; the table counts it as returned. Per Lapis Lazuli:

Unstable Catalyst saves ingredients but needs 6.11 catalysts' worth of charges per Lapis Lazuli. Resonant Catalyst needs 0.37, and fewer crafts: the Shattered Crystal you put in comes straight back. One player reckons the Advanced Athanor with catalysts is now the more efficient way to make Lapis Lazuli, compared with a Cauldron (Steam thread, September 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

The Cauldron makes whatever product its three ingredients' values add up closest to, so a change in the sum can change the product. The cauldron finder explains the values. Two things change the sum:

An ingredient ran out

The Cauldron has three belt inputs. Players report that when one belt runs dry, another ingredient fills the empty slot (Steam thread, January 2026, before the item filter below (opens in a new tab)). Take Flax, Linen Rope and Redcurrant, a Coke recipe players shared in February 2026 (Steam thread (opens in a new tab)). It sums to 27, inside Coke's window of 25 to 35. If the Redcurrant belt runs dry and Flax takes its slot, the Cauldron holds two Flax and one Linen Rope. The finder puts that at Iron Sand, with or without the community rule for repeated ingredients (which is unverified).

The fix is in the Cauldron itself: the 0.4.4.4298 patch added an item filter, because the developers found a mixed-up Cauldron too punishing. Players describe it as a lock that ties each slot to one ingredient, and report that not every item is on the list, so a slot holding an unlisted item can still be filled by something else (Steam thread, September 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Also keep each input belt slightly over-supplied, and filter the output so one stray product can't clog the next machine.

The recipe predates the June 2026 rebalance

The 0.5.4467 patch removed an extra multiplier from the Cauldron's output calculation and reworked several recipes. Its notes warn that existing Cauldrons may change output, though most early-game recipes should not. Right after it landed, a player reported that their Cauldron recipe for Unstable Catalyst no longer worked (Steam thread, June 2026 (opens in a new tab)), so treat any list or calculator from before then as suspect. Paste a recipe into the finder to check it with current values, and after an update our patch notes pages list which item values changed.

Sums near the edge of a window break first: the Coke recipe above sits only 2 inside its window, next to Clay. The finder's “Closest to target” sort puts the safest combinations first.

The Advanced Cauldron (Level VIII, 20 Silver Ingot) takes two ingredients instead of three. The game doesn't state how it picks the product, so the finder leaves it out. Players worked out the basic rule from the pairs they tested (Steam thread, spring 2026 (opens in a new tab)), and a community calculator's write-up (opens in a new tab) adds the conditions in brackets:

• Two different items: the product whose target is nearest the difference between their values (counting only products whose target is below the dearer item's value, and never either input).
• Two of the same item: the next product whose target is above that item's value (not the item itself).

Example: Flax (2) and Chamomile (55) differ by 53. Salt (65) is nearer, but it isn't below Chamomile's 55, so the rule gives Coal (40). Two Chamomile give Salt.

Checked against 1.0 values, the rule fits 33 of the 35 different pairs posted in that thread. The misses: Lavender + Flax (posted as Black Powder; the rule gives Turquoise) and Flax + Ruby (posted as Pure Gold Dust; the rule gives Perfect Diamond). Those pairs were posted before the June 2026 rebalance, and the 1.0 patch fixed Advanced Cauldrons that sometimes found no product. Treat the rule as a strong hint and test a pair in-game before you build around it.